Gerzeh culture

Gerzeh (also Girza or Jirzah) was a predynastic Egyptian cemetery located along the west bank of the Nile and today named after al-Girza, the nearby present day town in Egypt. Gerzeh is situated only several miles due east of the lake of the Al Fayyum.

The Gerzean culture is a material culture identified by archaeologists. It is the second of three phases of the predynastic Naqada Culture, and so is called Naqada II. It is preceded by the Amratian culture (Naqada I) and followed by the Protodynastic or Semainian culture (Naqada III).

Historical context

Though varying dates have historically been assigned by sundry authorities, Gerzean culture as used as follows distinguishes itself from the Amratian culture and begins circa 3500 BC lasting through circa 3200 BC or the end of the Naqada II period. Accordingly, some authorities place the onset of the Naqada I period coincident with the Amratian or Badarian cultures, i.e. c.3800 BC to 3650 BC even though some Badarian artifacts may in fact date earlier (for example, see Badarian). Nevertheless, because the Naqada sites were first divided by the British Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie, in 1894, into these Amratian (after the cemetery near El-Amrah) and Gerzean (after the cemetery near Gerzeh) sub-periods, the original convention is used in this text. This era lasts through a period of time when the desertification of the Sahara had nearly reached its present state.